Positive Signs Valley Minorities See Hope In Clinton's Appointees

Last year when then-Gov. Bill Clinton talked about his candidacy for president at Georgetown University, David Portlock of Easton was watching on C-SPAN.

Portlock, assistant dean at Lafayette College, didn't know much about the Arkansas politician. But he liked what he was hearing.

For the first time in years, Portlock, a black man, was hearing a would-be president talk about his desire to have a multi-cultural team of administrators working with him to turn the country around.

Better still, Portlock believed that Clinton sounded sincere in his desire to work side by side with minorities.

"I was very impressed with him at that time and felt that certainly the message at the time was one of inclusion and one of diversity, one that I felt very comfortable with," says Portlock, who has been at Lafayette for 22 years.

As Clinton prepares to take the oath of office on Wednesday, area African-Americans interviewed by The Morning Call are optimistic that the 42nd president will bring about positive change for their fellow blacks and other minorities.

They say Clinton already has shown signs that he is serious about his desires to be inclusive rather than exclusive. Clinton has chosen an unprecedented number of minorities --four blacks and two Latinos -- to serve in his cabinet.

The blacks include Ron Brown, a law partner and chairman of the Democratic National Committee, as commerce secretary; U.S. Rep. Mike Epsy as agriculture secretary; Jesse Brown, executive director of the Disabled American Veterans, as secretary of veteran affairs, and Hazel O'Leary, executive vice president of Northern States Power Co., as energy secretary.

The Latinos are Henry Cisneros, former mayor of San Antonio, as housing and urban development secretary, and Frederico Pena, former mayor of Denver, as transportation secretary.

Speaking of the appointments, Portlock says, "This is consistent with what I saw in his first speech in Georgetown and what he carried through during his whole campaign. I'm very encouraged by that. I'm very optimistic that significant changes will come out."

Most of the blacks interviewed look at the Reagan-Bush years as an era of backsliding for African-Americans.

"I think they (the Reagan-Bush years) have been disastrous," says Jesse Johnson, who recently opened a funeral home in Eas ton. "Part of the problem is these folks made the practice of racism OK. It's OK to discriminate. It's OK to be biased. It's OK to practice hatred. I think that has set the country back quite a bit."

Portlock says President Bush wanted people to think that he was pushing programs that would help blacks become better educated. But, in reality, Portlock says, "There was little that you could really sink your teeth into and say the Bush administration was supporting and encouraging development in those areas that would encourage and increase minority students, black students, attending college."

In fact, Portlock says, Bush's proposal for a voucher system in primary education, one that would give parents money to use to send children to the school of their choosing, has been viewed by blacks as a veiled attempt at segregation.

"Certainly the whole issue surrounding the voucher system tended to suggest that if there were those in the community who did not want their children to go to racially mixed or diverse schools, they would be encouraged to go to another school," Portlock says.

Chuck Penn Sr., producer and host of "Harambe," a Service Electric Cable TV program that focuses on area blacks and black issues, says the Reagan and Bush administrations did little to encourage black advancement in the workplace. And Penn alleges that at many corporations in the Lehigh Valley the percentage of blacks employed doesn't begin to equal the percentage in the local population.

But Marvin Johnson, owner of Jordan Beer Co. in Allentown and no relation to Jesse Johnson, is not one to say that blacks and other minorities slid back any more than anyone else did during the Reagan-Bush years.

"I didn't really fare that bad," says Johnson, who opened his beer distributorship three years ago during Bush's second year in office.

However, he does agree that the policies of the Reagan-Bush years regarding blacks tended to be negative.

None of the African-Americans interviewed is expecting miracles from Clinton. "He has a big mess to clean up. I don't think anyone could clean it up in four years. But if he could at least get us on the right road ... ," says Marvin Johnson, who volunteered for the local Clinton campaign.

As much as they aren't looking for miracles, area blacks says they aren't expecting handouts either. Indeed, during his campaign Clinton stressed time and time again about the need for people to help themselves.

Barbara Taliaferro, Kutztown University's assistant to the president for human diversity, says that African-Americans don't need special treatment just because of the color of their skin.